What is the purpose of water in the photosynthetic process?
This process happens in photosystem II and without the process. photolysis, there would be no photosynthesis. Give a brief detailed step by step answer.
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Movement of sugar through a plant version of a circulatory system. It is the hydro-cycle.
Water is a solvent. It comes up through the roots to move starches and sugars in the plant.
“Give a brief detailed step by step answer.”
Sorry, we don’t do your homework for you.
Isn’t it the source of hydrogen used with co2 to form sugar and release o2 as a by product?
Nobody correct yet!
@BhacSsylan
This is homework, yours, not mine!
( check my profile )
Considering it’s against the rules to ask about homework, you should perhaps make that more clear next time, because it does sound very much like that.
@BhacSsylan
I know and that is why it is YOUR homework. I thought to light a science fire at this spot.
PS: Your first response was deleted.
So I missed sunlight as the energy that breaks down H2O then? I could just google it but that’s no fun.
Yes, I understand that, just giving you advice as to how you can avoid responses like my first one in the future, saying something along the lines as it is homework for us in the question would make it less likely for someone else to make that mistake. And yes, I saw that (chances are my other ones will too, that’s fine), but you know what it said so it’s fine.
I’m not a biologist, but I’ll take a stab. Water is involved in every step in, to and from photosynthesis. It allows plants to use the energy provided by the sun, and convert it into chemical energy.
Water does this by carrying nutrients up from the soil through the plant’s circulatory system to the leaves, contributing hydrogen atoms the carbon split away from CO2 by photosynthesis to form the various sugar and carbohydrate molecules built in the process, and carrying these sugars and carbohydrates to all portions of the plant to nourish it. It also provides the liquid medium in which colorphyl can act as a catalyst in the chemical reaction of photodissociation.
Not yet!!!
The key is right in front of all.
Photolysis.
Remember, this process is the key reason plants take in water.
PS: Now, I must walk my dog. Be back soon.
I would think photodissociation covers that. Not sure what you are looking for.
I thought it was homework, too, especially with that last instruction about listing steps, phrased as an imperative, and I did check your profile. They didn’t add up. The misspelling of “botany” in the topic tags tipped the balance for me, making me think it was the profile that was misleading.
Since the safe presumption behind most questions is that the asker does not have the answer, I don’t think we were expecting to be quizzed. I agree with @BhacSsylan that it’s wise to be clear about intentions, especially when going against the usual pattern.
Turgor pressure then, plants can’t exchange gasses if the pores are shut. That’s all I can’t think of without cheating.
@Jeruba
” The misspelling of “botany” in the topic tags tipped the balance for me, making me think it was the profile that was misleading.”
Your profile lead me to the conclusion that you are an English pedant without a clue here. Try to answer the question or go parse three obscure lines of Chaucer!.
@Neodarwinian; Forget science class. Go directly to charm school, please.
@ARE_you_kidding_me
I will tell you as the usual hangers on here, people with nothing better to do than miss the point, are gathering to this question and ruining it for me anyway
Photolysis is the enzymatic process where water is split to replace the electron given up to the reaction center from the chlorophyll ” twins ” P680. This is the primary, and precise, purpose plants need to ingest water. The molecule of water is split into O2 and H^+, while that electron is fed into the electron ” hole ” P680.
This was a bad idea as I see this site is hopeless!
@gailcalled
Seems you missed both classes.
We are through here.
It’s good to brush up on biology anyway. It’ fascinating and I wish I had taken more than a couple of sequences in college.
@ARE_you_kidding_me
Yes, this would probably be in first semester general college biology, or HS AP biology.
And biology is fascinating! I can not see anyone going to college and not becoming a biologist. Of course I am slightly biased!
Perhaps I will craft another question, but as you see there were some deletions here. Off topic nonsense was some of it.
I doubt high school AP covers anything of this complexity these days. Things have likely devolved since you were a student in High school. Biology for me in H.S. in the 90’s was along the lines of….. this is a picture of a bear.. a bear is what type of animal? A bear is a mammal…. Photosynthesis is strictly university level now.
@ARE_you_kidding_me
Sorry to hear that as we need to train future scientists. HS, and earlier, is where that process begins.
“you can’t stop the signal” They are there…. they’ll do wonderful things too, even if society tries to stop them.
@Neodarwinian There is reason to take heartl. There is formidable opposition to science and rationality right now, but the Zeitgeist leans forward, and it always has. One only has to look back at the Zeitgeist in the Victorian age, the age of colonization, the dark ages, the age of mass conquest, and the most hideous of all, the early Israelites under Abraham, Moses and Joshua to see the incredible leaps forward in morality over that time.
Maybe I am missing something here. Water is needed because it is used in the reaction to create sugars. Water and CO2 combine to form sugar and oxygen.
The equation is:
6CO2 + 12H2O + light → C6H12O6 + 6O2 + 6H2O
I am sure there are people on this site who know much more about this than I do. I took a class at a local nature center and became curious about photosynthesis, so I did some reading up on it. As I recall, the key part of the reaction is the breakdown of the water, which is what the light energy is used for. Although the reaction can be written as above in a single line, the process is rather complex, going through several steps. You can get an idea of this from the fact that there is water on both sides of the equation. The person who pieced it together got a Nobel prize for his effort.
6CO2 + 12H2O + light → C6H12O6 + 6O2 + 6H2O
You are right about complexity as most of this operation happens in the Calvin cycle where, to begin, CO2 ( the carbon anyway—O2 is ” waste ” here ) is fixed to oxaloacetate.. The light dependent reaction is where photolysis takes place. Photo system II gives ATP to the Calvin cycle and photo system I gives NADPH to the cycle.
The above equation is the simplified version of what is happening in both the light dependent reaction and the light independent reaction.
One last comment. I highly recommend the book Photosynthesis by Isaac Asimov. It is written at the layman’s level, but contains some detailed information. It is a bit old, but the information presented on photosynthesis still holds. What I particularly like about the book is that it describes the various experiments in a historical context. If you are pressed for time, just read the chapter on isotopes. It tells how isotopes were used to unravel the various steps in photosynthesis leading to the discovery of the Calvin cycle.
@LostInParadise
Never heard of that Asimov book but I will keep a lookout for it.
Yes, without isotopes many processes, such as the Hersey Chase experiments would not have been possible.
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